Chapter XII: Excommunication and Outlawry Spiritual Baptism in the Wartburg (3)

“I believe, that, even had the Pope made fornication obligatory, he would not have given rise to and furthered such great unchastity [as by celibacy].” “Who can sufficiently deplore the fury of the devil with his godless, cursed law?” The “Roman knave” wishes to rule everywhere, and the “universities, those shameless brothels, sit still and say nothing.... They, like obedient children of the Church, carry out the commands of the whoremaster. Every Christian ought to resist him at the risk of his life, even though he had a thousand heads, because we see how the poor, simple, common folk who stand in terror of his childish, shameful Bulls, do, and submit to, whatever the damned Roman rogue invents with the help of the devil.”[223]

Many of his contemporaries may well be excused for having felt that such language was the result of the Pope’s Bull; the curse of the Church had overtaken Luther, in the solitude of the Wartburg it had done its work, and now the spirit of evil and darkness had gained complete mastery.[224]

“So great,” he cries, “is God’s anger over this vale of Tafet and Hinnan that those who are most learned, and live most chastely, do more harm than those who learn nothing and live in fornication.” “O unhappy wretches that we are, who live in these latter days among so many Baalites, Bethelites and Molochites, who all appear so spiritual and Christian, and yet have swallowed up the whole world and themselves desire to be the only Church; they live and laugh in their security and freedom, instead of weeping tears of blood over the cruel murder of the children of our people.”[225]

In conclusion, he gives his open approval to the Wittenbergers, that “Mass is no longer said, that there is no more organ-playing,” and that “bleating and bellowing” has ceased in the Church, so that the Papists say: “They are all heretics and have gone crazy.”[226] It seems to him that Saxony is the happiest of lands, “because there the living truth of the Gospel has arisen”; surely the Elector Frederick must be the Prince, foretold by prophecy, who was to deliver the Holy Sepulchre; himself he compares to the “Angel at the Sepulchre,” or to Magdalene who announced the Resurrection.[227]

His self-confidence and arrogance had not been shaken by the many weary hours of lonely introspection in the Wartburg, but, on the contrary, had been nourished and inflamed. That was the period of his “spiritual baptism”; he felt volcanic forces surging up within him. He believed that a power from above had commanded him to teach as he was doing. Hence he called the Wartburg his Patmos; as the Apostle John had received his revelation on Patmos, so, as he thought, he also had been favoured in his seclusion with mysterious communications from above.

The idea of a divine commission now began to penetrate all his being with overwhelming force.

When the ecclesiastical troubles at Wittenberg necessitated his permanent return thither, he declared to the Elector, who had hitherto never heard such language from his lips, “Your Electoral Grace is already aware, or, if unaware, is hereby apprised of the fact, that I have not received the Gospel from man, but from heaven only, through Our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I might already have accounted myself and signed myself a servant and evangelist, and for the future shall do so.”[228] We must also refer to the days of his Saxon Patmos--which exercised so deep an influence on his interior life--the remarkable mystical utterance to which his pupils afterwards declared he had given vent at a later date, viz. that he had been “commanded,” nay, “enjoined under pain of eternal reprobation (‘_interminaretur_’) not to doubt in any way of these things [of the doctrines he was to teach].”[229]

Every road that led back to his duty to the Church and his Order was barred by the gloomy enthusiasm Luther kindled within himself, subsequently to his spiritual baptism in the Wartburg.

The time spent in the Wartburg brought him his final conviction in his calling as a prophet and his divine commission, but if we are to understand Luther aright we must not forget that this conviction was a matter of gradual growth (cp. vol. iii., xvi. 1).

We cannot doubt that even in the first years of his public career, certainly in 1519 and 1520, the belief in his own divine mission had begun to take firm root in his mind.

In order to explain the rise of this idea we must turn first of all to his confidential letters dating from this period; his public writings in this respect are of less importance. With their help it is possible to recognise to some extent the course of this remarkable psychological development. So soon as he had perceived that his discovery, of the worthlessness of good works, and of justification by faith alone, was in permanent contradiction to the teaching of the Roman Church, the presentiment necessarily began to awaken within him, that the whole body of the faithful had been led by Rome into the greatest darkness. He fancied himself fortified in this idea by the sight of the real abuses which had overspread the whole life of the Church in his time. He thought he descried a universal corruption which had penetrated down to the very root of ecclesiasticism, and he did not scruple to say so in his earliest sermons and lectures. He felt it his duty to bewail the falling away. In the hours in which he gave free play to his fancy, it even seemed to him that Christ and the Gospel had almost disappeared.

The applause which greeted the appearance of his first writings, and which he eagerly accepted, confirmed him in his belief that he had made a most far-reaching discovery. He lacked the sense and discrimination which might have enabled him to see the too great importance he was ascribing to his invention. He says in May, 1518, to an elderly friend who opposed his views: My followers, prelates of the Church and scholarly men of the world, all rightly admit, that “formerly they had heard nothing of Christ and the Gospel.” “To put it briefly, I am convinced that no reform of the Church is possible unless the ecclesiastical dogmas, the decisions of the Popes, the theology of the schools, philosophy and logic as they exist at present are completely altered.... I fear no man’s contradiction when defending such a thesis.”[230] In the same year, in March, he wrote to a friendly ecclesiastic, that the theologians who had hitherto occupied the professorial chairs, viz. the schoolmen, did not understand the Gospel and the Bible one bit. “To quibble about the meaning of words is not to interpret the Gospel. All the Professors, Universities and Doctors are nothing but shadows whom you have no cause to be afraid of.”[231]

If he wished to proceed further--and we know how he allowed himself to be carried away--he could not do otherwise than assume to himself the dignity of a divinely appointed teacher. No one save a prophet could dare condemn the whole of the past in the way he was doing.

During the excitement incidental to periods of transition such as Luther’s, belief in a supernatural calling was no rare thing. Those who felt within themselves unusual powers and wished to assume the command of the movements of the day not unfrequently laid claim to a divine mission. Not only fanatics from the ranks of the Anabaptists, but worldly minded men, such as Hutten and Sickingen, dreamt, in Luther’s day, of great enterprises for which they had been chosen. In short, there were only two courses open to Luther, either to draw back when it was seen that the Church remained resolutely opposed to him, or to vindicate his assaults by representing himself as a messenger sent by God. Luther was not slow to adopt the latter course. The idea to him was no mere passing fancy, but took firm root in his mind. He assured his friends that he was daily receiving new light from God in this matter through the study of the Scripture.

It was under the influence of this persuasion that, in January, 1518, he wrote the following remarkable words to Spalatin: “To those who are desirous of working for the glory of God, an insight into the written Word of God is given from above, in answer to their prayers; this I have experienced” (“_experto crede ista_”); he says that the action of the Holy Ghost may be relied on, and urges others to do as he has done.[232] It would also appear, that, believing firmly that he was under the “influence of the Holy Ghost,” he, for a while, cherished the illusion that the Church would gradually come over to his teaching. When at length he was forced to recognise that the ecclesiastical authorities were, on the contrary, determined to check him, he decided to throw overboard all the preceding ages and the whole authority of the Church. As a natural consequence he then proceeded to reform the old and true idea of the Church. The preserving and proclaiming of the faith is committed to no external teaching office instituted by Christ, such was his teaching, but simply to the illumination of the Spirit; each one is led by this interior guide; it is the Spirit who is directing me in the struggle just commenced and who, through me, will bring back to the world the Gospel which has so long lain hidden under rubbish.

5. Wartburg Legends

Luther’s adversaries have frequently taken the statements contained in the letters of the lonely inmate of the castle[233] concerning his carnal temptations, and his indulgence in eating and drinking (“_crapula_”), rather too unfavourably, as though he had been referring to real, wilful sin rather than to mere temptation, and as though Luther was not exaggerating in his usual vein when he speaks of his attention to the pleasures of the table. At least no proof is forthcoming in favour of this hostile interpretation.

On the other hand, the attempts constantly made by Luther’s supporters to explain away the sensual lusts from which he tells us he suffered there, and likewise the enticements (“_titillationes_”) which he had admitted even previously to Staupitz his Superior, as nothing more than worldliness, inordinate love of what is transitory, and temptations to self-seeking, are certainly somewhat strange. Why, we may ask, make such futile efforts?[234] Is it in order to counteract the exaggerations of Luther’s opponents, who, in popular works, have recently gone so far as, in all good faith, to declare the “trouble” (“_molestiæ_”) of which Luther complained in his correspondence at that time, was the result of disease arising from the sins of his youth, though, from the context, it is clear that the “trouble” in question was simply a prosaic attack of constipation.[235]

Luther related later, according to the “Table-Talk,”[236] how the wife of “Hans von Berlips [Berlepsch, the warden of the Wartburg] coming to Eisenach,” and “scenting” that he (Luther) was in the Castle, would have liked to see him; but as this was not permitted he had been taken to another room, while she was lodged in his. Luther mentions this when alluding to the annoyance from which he complains he suffered owing to the noisy ghosts of the Wartburg, whom he took for devils. Two pages, who brought him food and drink twice a day, were the only human beings allowed to visit him. He relates that during the night she spent in his room this woman was likewise disturbed by ghosts: “All that night there was such a to-do in the room that she thought a thousand devils were in it.” The fact is that Berlepsch, the Warden of the Castle, was not then married, wedding Beata von Ebeleben only in 1523.[237] Hence we have here either an anachronism when the visitor to the Wartburg is spoken of as being already his wife, or a case of mistaken identity. Luther speaks of the visit quite simply. The woman’s object in calling at the Castle may very well have been to gratify her feminine curiosity by a sight of Luther, and to pay a visit to the Warden. The supposition that the slightest misconduct took place between Luther and the visitor can only be classed in the category of the fictitious.

The mention of the diabolical spectres infesting the Wartburg calls to mind the famous ink-stain on one of the walls of the Castle.

The tradition is that it was caused by Luther hurling his inkpot at the devil, who was disputing with him. The tradition is, however, a legend which probably had its origin in a murky splash on the wall. In Köstlin and Kawerau’s new biography of Luther this has already been pointed out, and the fact recalled that in 1712 Peter the Great was shown a similar stain in Luther’s room at Wittenberg, not in the Wartburg, and that Johann Salomo Semler, a well-known Protestant writer, in his Autobiography published in 1781, mentions a like stain in the fortress of Coburg where Luther had tarried.[238]